Culture is integral to how we live our everyday lives, how we experience health and illness, and how we negotiate our health seeking behaviors. Cultural context is a salient aspect of our everyday experiences of health, giving meaning to our negotiations of health. Yet, culture is often either neglected in health promotion efforts emanating from the West or deeply ingrained in Western values. Even more problematically, these Western-based ideologies of health promotion often work to precisely turn culture as a barrier to healthy behavior, instead working to change cultures elsewhere based on Western scripts, values, and concepts. Culture thus emerges in health promotion efforts as backward and as the object of Western-style health promotion campaigns, using the narrative of health thus to disseminate Western-style values of health. What we have as a result often in the name of health promotion is a Western hegemony of health, pushing behaviors that are deeply Western,
This blog offers Mohan Dutta's reflections on the theoretical framework of the culture-centered approach, examining the interplays among Structure, Culture, and Agency in shaping marginalisation and the ways in which communities at the margins challenge structures. Writings on the blog are continually being revised to reflect the organic analysis of structure and agency.